


Seismic shifts

by Anuna



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Introspection, accepting the parts of yourself which you don't like is hard, change is hard, character study - grant ward, grant trying to help skye, post 2x10, seismic sex, while kara is trying to keep an eye on him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-01
Updated: 2015-02-01
Packaged: 2018-03-10 01:04:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3271001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anuna/pseuds/Anuna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's learned his lesson about letting things go, and he's learned it with Skye in particular, but something it telling him <i>not</i> to let her go right now. </p><p>A companion piece to "Feel so paper - thin".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seismic shifts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [noprincenorape](https://archiveofourown.org/users/noprincenorape/gifts).



> Writing this felt like pulling good teeth. I have no idea why it was so hard, and I hope it doesn't suck entirely. There should be another part, with a nice and hopefully satisfying resolution to all this.

There's a girl with bright lipstick and a too deep cleavage in the corner of the bar to his left, and she isn't leaving him out of sight. Grant stirs his glass and attempts to shove down the notion. His right side is enveloped in dull pain, which isn't bad per se – he would simply like to stop thinking about it. There are various aches across his entire body, and the alcohol hasn't numbed them yet – not that he intends to bring himself to that kind of state of inebriation. He might have escaped SHIELD men, who were probably level five agents before all of this happened and thus no match for him – but he prefers to stay mostly sober and alert. 

Kara should be here in the morning. He's got an entire night, and the insistent lady in the corner could easily provide distraction. 

Grant sighs. One of John's frequent advices was that, when someone wants to scratch your itch, you let them (and it was applied in one particular type of situation). Everything that was strictly without involvement was allowed and welcome. He shifts in his chair and wonders if there's going to be rain tonight, because his healed wounds are complaining. John might have gone crazy, he might have been crazy (the same brand of crazy that his brother was), but that doesn't mean all of his advices were bad. Grant tosses back his glass and gives the girl in the corner a deliberate look that brings a confident smile to her lips. 

Thing is, he knows how this game is played. He's aware that his looks make him desirable (he'd be an awfully bad spy if he wasn't). It takes less than half an hour, and he's back in his motel room with the girl, and she's dragging his shirt up his chest, and kissing along the way. The sensation is pleasant, tingles of anticipation that do what they're supposed to do; and he's happily focusing on the tension below his navel, which allows him to shut out everything else. It's just biology, a mechanical process and nothing more, which he was told so many times to accept and appreciate. Once his shirt is away the girl gives him an appreciative look. Her moves are confident and he supposes he's in for a pleasing experience which will bring relief. Tomorrow, when Kara shows up, he will be significantly less sore and more clear minded. The girl sits on the bed in front of him and tugs at his belt, then her hand is just where he wants it the most – and the moment before he closes his eyes to give himself to physical bliss, something makes him alert. 

The way she eyes his scars. 

_Afghanistan_ and a fake cover story about some bold military operation is on the tip of his tongue – he used that one so many times and it never failed to work – only this time something stops him. The girl traces the scar tissue with her fingernail, grins, looking up and asks

“Are you a soldier, or something?” and when he doesn't deny or confirm it, she redirects her eyes to his body. “Cool,” she says. 

And that does something to him. The pleasant tension is suddenly replaced with something cold and heavy as he remembers his own voice giving a certain promise months earlier. All of the sudden he's aware of the smeared lipstick and the way she's looking at him – a story she'd tell later, that guy with crapload of scars she fucked in a motel room – and everything that seemed attractive about her is now gone. 

She is about to open his pants when he grabs her wrist – he's not rough, but his hand is firm. 

“No,” he says. She looks up at him as if he's grown another head, and he might be a jerk, but he doesn't want her lipstick all over his dick. “I'm sorry,” he says. She looks disappointed, but leaves him alone. 

Something in him loosens. He will not force his body to enjoy, when his mind doesn't.

“Suit yourself,” she says, and just before the door clicks closed, he thinks he can hear something along the lines on a “weirdo”. 

Well, that he definitely is. 

He drops onto the bed, suddenly aware of the anxious pressure filling his chest, and he focuses on breathing slowly and regularly, while keeping his palms over his eyes. 

Wasn't that just fucking great?

The awareness of the tension comes back, and now he's left to his own devices. He strips quickly and economically, and does a quick job during which he tries not to think of certain pair of brown eyes. In the end, when discomfort is spent and his body is contently resting, Grant gives in to his mind's desire. Memories of Skye come back unbidden, along with the mix made of confusion, betrayal and some anger. Not much, though. He's not angry, Grant realizes, even though he thought he should be, he is _sad_ ; and there is something about it all that bothers him, but he can't even begin to name what. 

He lies awake on the bed and lets his mind spin. Time and time again it comes back to the girl that walked out of his room with her pride hurt, and while he feels somewhat bad for her, the memory of how she looked at his scars jars him. 

Reconciling with the fact that he won't figure out what is it that's bothering him so much, he wills his body and mind to sleep. 

*

He keeps tabs on SHIELD, but doesn't get too close for his own and Kara's safety. 

Cal walks into their safe house one cold and windy day with a request. Grant agrees. 

“She shot you,” Kara says later. “Four times.” 

“I didn't forget,” Ward says. His weapons are all ready. He meets Kara's look and makes sure to remember – Skye _was_ the girl he took out of her van, the girl he promised to protect. She _is_ girl whom he betrayed and she returned the favor when he wasn't expecting it. One and the same. “Sometimes you try to help a caged dog and he bites you.”

Kara narrows her eyes at him, loading her gun. 

“Right. If you compared me to a dog, maybe I'd shoot you too. But in the foot,” her voice is serious but light, and Grant knows her enough by now to know there's a joke hidden in there. 

“How nice of you,” he says. “I like dogs.”

“That's an understatement, I'm afraid,” Kara says. “And I am _very_ nice.”

Grant takes a deep breath and thinks of Cal, in panic, explaining his suspicions. Grant's skin crawls. “You know what SHIELD does to gifted.” 

Kara arches her eyebrows. 

“They lock them up in dark basements?” she asks, her implication purposeful. Her voice still sounds a bit strange and the scar on her face is visible, but it's not as glaring as it used to be. It's something she's thankful to Cal for, until they find a solution to remove the electronic mask from her features. 

“That's exactly why I want to help her,” Grant says. 

Kara just sighs and follows him. They have a mission ahead and their first step is stealing a jet. Kara is always there, she's always by his side, she always has his back. The knowledge ripples through him and he lets it settle. 

She tells him he's wrong, but she's still sticking to his plan. Because it's his and that means something. Grant gives her a brief look, not sure how to convey his thoughts. 

“If she tries to shoot you again, I'll shoot her,” Kara says, and Grant shakes his head a bit. This time _he_ won't let it happen.

But it's good to know that he's safe.

*

Here's the thing: he looks at Skye and feels like he doesn't recognize her any more. 

Grant can see the connection with Cal – their reactions, the humor, even the gesticulations. That doesn't put his mind to rest at all. It's hard to look at the mirror and see something you don't want to see. 

Here's one thing he learned in SHIELD's basement – sometimes it's good having a lot of time to think. His life was often evolving around making quick and as accurate – as - possible assessments. Considering how he misjudged Skye, based on insufficient information, even when she was spitting verbal venom at him through that electric barrier (it was her right to be angry at him after all), he is consciously deciding to take more time now. 

What he sees isn't complicated to understand. He just doesn't know how to help her, when the time finally comes. 

At the academy they taught him psychology – various things, from human cognition and perception, to group behavior and behavior assessment; and what he sees now, loud and clear is something someone with more training than him might call depression. Or maybe even post traumatic stress. And he watches as Skye unravels, slowly, day by day, and says nothing, and does nothing (because you can't help someone who doesn't want it). 

That doesn't mean it's not ripping him apart, or that he sleeps while she keeps tossing in her own bed. 

Kara settles for giving him disapproving glances (ones he understands, just like she understands the reasons for his actions – she simply can't help but be a mother hen now when her own mind is clearer, and he appreciates that. He _does_ , because he never had someone who did this for him before, even though they knew the ugly truth about him). He's patented a _leave me alone_ look in return, and the only person allowed to be visibly concerned is Cal. Meanwhile, the rings around Skye's eyes grow bigger and her hair looses its shine, and Grant wonders if he will ever see the girl from the van again. 

She's struggling and keeping everyone at arm's length, and Grant needs to remind himself daily not to run to her rescue. 

But she's struggling. That's good, he thinks. There's still fight in her. That gives him hope. 

Once you stop struggling you start running into solid walls. 

*

He's always been a light sleeper and even though he had spent periods of time living with various people in close quarters, he's never truly slept _with_ someone; so when Skye wakes in the middle of the night after her confessions and crying, he wakes as well. 

The way she sits up telegraphs distress. He's familiar with it – the months spent in the vault had nothing but darkness and the empty room, and all he had there was himself (and later, memories, thoughts, decisions. Small choices, but choices never the less.) And thing is, he doesn't want it for her. 

“Shh,” he says as he gently, gently pulls her down. Not to hold her close, but to let her know she's not alone. “It's okay,” he adds, even though it's not, not really. What he wants to tell her is that it's okay to be upset. That he wants to understand. She hides her face against his chest until her breathing evens out. Then she moves, enough to search for his face in semidarkness. 

“Did it shake?” she asks. 

“No,” he says, without asking for explanation. He's fairly certain what she means. She drags the air into her lungs, but he doesn't hear the exhale of relief – because she still can't afford herself one.

“It felt so real,” she whispers. 

“I know,” he says. 

She stills and he can almost feel her growing very, very serious. “Do you?”

“It feels like waking up and wondering where is the gun you just fired,” he says. “You still hear the gunshot and feel the recoil in your hands. And then you spend ten minutes telling yourself that you actually slept and dreamed it, except it's something that happened before,” he says. 

She nods, slowly and mutely. 

“I know,” he says. At that, she's perfectly still. 

* 

He takes her for a walk. 

The cold winter air is sobering, and the barren nature doesn't leave much room for imagination – it's a far cry from the confines of his cell, but there is silence around them, and it reminds him of the six months silence he's spent on his own. 

Silence is good. He knows. It makes you finally listen to yourself. 

The only thing silence can't do for you is offer any answers. The snow underneath his feet is nearly frozen, and he thinks of last fifteen years of his life, which feel like equally frozen space and time he has spent all by himself. Maybe he truly doesn't know what love is, or is supposed to be, but he knows this – Skye's was the voice that made a difference after such a long time. He isn't sure if that somehow constitutes a reason good enough for love, but then again, he isn't sure what would be _good enough_. Sometimes something happens – and your world changes. He hasn't felt that kind of change for fifteen years. 

They have wandered among thin trees aimlessly, and Skye is now walking ahead of him, still looking tense. Everything about her seems so clear – her shoulders are still hunched and all her clothes are black, and it feels like she has borrowed too much from his own closet – choices, skeletons and regrets. And he feels he is in precarious position now, because he has walked this walk, and he knows these shoes. Skye stops to a halt, set of her shoulders both stubborn and dejected. She doesn't look back to make sure he's there – she's either confident that he is, or she knows. Maybe it's both, maybe she's finally believing the thing he never really put into words, but it's been laid out there never the less – that he will always be there. 

_But does she really deserve it? Kara asked_

_If I got what I deserved I'd be long dead, Grant answered_

“I wonder why did it have to be something so... destructive,” she says. “Like, why this? Why is my _special ability_ blind destruction?” she turns around to show air quotes and Grant waits, because she's holding her breath and the fire in her eyes feels like it's only starting. She leaves the rest of the pressing question unspoken, like so many things between them are. 

_Is that who I really am?_

And Grant knows, it's not his part to answer that for her. He can't choose who she wants to be. 

He can do something else, though. “What do you think what you're about?” he asks, and the look she gives him is a lot less fire and more uncertain. She almost looks like she's pouting, almost like they're back at the plane and he is being her SO and instructing her what to do, step – by - step, in any situation that might arise, and this time he's not giving her the answer she wants. 

He picks a different approach. “Do you remember what you told me the first time I asked you what you were after?” 

She gives him a confused look at first, but then he sees understanding dawning on her. 

“The truth,” he reminds her, although he can tell she remembers. 

One corner of her mouth tilts up. “You were after world peace,” she says, looking at him with that special brand of Skye - irony. “You were going to say?” 

“People who are after truth usually end up getting it,” he says, leaning against a nearby tree and slightly opening his hands to say, look what you did to me. The feeling of talking to her like this is still overwhelming. He needs to organize his thoughts – there are too many of them, all leading up to this one thing he can't truly put into words. And that bothers him, because he's been trained to be precise, to use words like he would use weapons – economically, without inflicting more damage than necessary. Skye is looking at him with interest and her remembers these moments – back when she was willing to hear him out and share important thoughts he had. Then he thinks he has just the right idea. “Truth is, in fact, a lot like earthquakes. And sometimes... world just has to shatter.” 

“Wow Ward,” she says, her tone mimicking the humor it once had, but it falls flat because her eyes are not reflecting it. “That's... poetic.”

He shrugs. “That's what I think,” he gives her a half smile, laced with sorrow. “You're not some harmless little thing. You've never been.” 

She leans against the tree across from his and folds her hands across her chest. “Says the guy who told me I don't look that big.” 

He nearly laughs. “See what I was saying? You were never harmless. Not inside that van, not as a trained agent, and certainly not as a person with special abilities.”

“A freak,” she says, looking at the ground, and it rubs him in all the wrong ways. He's suddenly angry, but not at her. 

“Tell me something,” he says, trying to suppress what he's feeling, “would Skye from that van call you a freak?” She looks up at him with uncertain eyes. “What would that girl tell you now?” 

“That girl is gone, Ward. That girl was naïve and so not ready to face everything.”

“Maybe,” he says, and all he wants right now is to pull her close and promise her he'll protect her; ( _you can't protect someone who refuses it_ chants Kara's voice in his mind); and he wants to punch Coulson in the face for allowing her to believe this, punch anyone it takes. The best thing he can do for her now is remain calm and collected. “But she wasn't wrong about everything. You were right when you called SHIELD shady. You were right when you questioned our right to hide the truth about what we did.”

“It's interesting how you keep saying we,” she remarks, but without the usual bite to her tone. He sighs. He hates being the one to break her heart, but the tricky thing with the truth is that it pisses you off first, only then it sets you free. 

“I was trained by SHIELD, Skye. I worked for SHIELD.”

“And you worked for Hydra,” she says and he can hear pain in her words. Pain and regret, but no hate any more. 

“Yes I did, but not because I believed _in_ them. But the thing is, sometimes I couldn't tell whom I worked _for_ ,” he says and she gives him the confused look he expects. “At that moment. Look, one week I had to get a guy, some scientist, and threaten him into giving the results of his research to SHIELD. I had to threaten his family, I had to prove we had fingers long enough to get him wherever he went, unless he stopped doing what he was doing. Next week I had to kidnap a woman and a child and threaten a journalist – the husband of said woman and father of the child - into dropping a story that had to be covered up. Only later I discovered one of these missions was Hydra.”

Skye looks at him completely pale. “Which one?” 

And he tells her, completely serious, “Does it matter?” 

*

The walls start to shake daily, glasses burst into little pieces, furniture rattles, after which the house falls silent. Somehow Skye's silence is much worse than her yelling. Yelling and fights leave cracks after all, things one can do something about, but the silence is like a wall, and Grant had plenty of lessons about Skye closing herself off like this. Sometimes they sit to eat and Ward sees sudden ripples in his plate of soup. Sometimes the silverware rattles and things spill over, sometimes it's just low rumble and shaking accompanied by Skye's pale face. She then leaves whatever she was doing and disappears into the woods before either he or Cal can say anything. 

“This is not how you're gonna help her,” Kara says when she finds him staring out through the window (again), and into the gathering darkness. He sighs. He knows what Kara is doing and knows that she is right in her concerns. “Are you going to wait until she comes back?” 

If it was his choice, then Grant would wait, but he knows that will do no good to Skye. The hardest thing about helping, truly helping, is somehow being there without imposing himself, without offering and extending his hand when it's not invited. And despite that night when Skye came to his arms and cried, she is still trying to deal with this mostly on her own (which is why it's not working). 

You can't help someone who doesn't want help – who is still running away from the problem at hand. 

“You know I won't,” Ward says. 

Kara gives him a heavy, worried look. “This isn't good for you,” she says. 

“And it's not good for Skye either.” 

“You're hurting yourself without any purpose,” she says and her stance on this is clear and firm, except something deep inside him can't accept the last part of her line. 

He takes a breath and bites back his initial retort. Then he says, a bit more forcefully than he planned to: “Do you think I can watch her like this and not be affected?”

And to that Kara says nothing. 

*

Weeks after waking him up for the first time, Grant wakes to the shifting of the weight on the edge of his bed. She is like a shadow, drawing in all the light that's streaming through his window – there isn't much anyway, and he can make out the outline of her body and her shimmering eyes. He turns on the light above his head and she somehow becomes smaller, just a lost girl sitting on the edge, looking like she would like to flee; only doesn't know where. 

“Skye,” he says, because her name is always special to say. If he can't protect her in any other way, then he can at least keep her name safe on his tongue. He barely wonders what would Kara say of his thought, would she call it excessive and tell him it's not healthy or good for him. 

She lowers her eyes and bites her lip. She looks fragile and that does something to him (of course it does, it always did, every time she telegraphed distress) and he is sitting up and leaning closer, while she's taking deep, measured breaths. “What happened?” he asks. 

She waits a heartbeat. “Bad dream,” she says, and he knows the next question. 

_Did it shake?_

He touches her shoulder carefully. 

“Sometimes it's just a bad dream,” he says, and she gives him this look, this horrible attempt of _no shit_ glance she had perfected to a t back before any of this had happened, and before he can even draw another breath her face crumples and the tears start. “Hey,” he tries to be soothing, nothing except soothing, and when he tries to pull her close she doesn't resist. She starts crying against his shoulder, wrecking sobs that end absorbed by his body as he holds her. And then when she's calmer she speaks. 

“I can't count on that any more, you know? One wrong.... thought, and things start to fall.”

And that only serves to bring back the ghosts he's tired of seeing. He knows the feel and shape of this darkness. 

“There's only one person who can control your thoughts,” he says gently into her hair. She lifts her head to look at him, and he's aware that she knows, and that she's dreading this, dreading the failure and the darkness swallowing her whole. 

“I'm tired,” she says, and God, does he know that too. 

“I know,” he says. 

She catches him off guard. (She always does). Her lips are warm against his, soft and somewhat uncertain, but he doesn't have it in him to tell her no. He accepts her instead, his kiss gentle and probing, and when he opens his eyes, she's looking at him like a hungry wild animal. 

The look twists his gut, and even though it's made of want and lust it's also a call for help, and he can't turn his back on her. Not when she's like this. And one might say that she is still his weakness – but is she really, if he chooses this? He leans back, bringing her body with him, holding her face safe between his palms as he continues kissing her. Her hands are restless, tugging at his clothes and he lets her, watches as she undresses him and then herself. 

All the while her eyes are glued to his right side. 

“It's...,” he trails off. He can't say it's fine, because it's not, because she knows it, and he knows it, and if it was any other way than not – fine; they wouldn't end up like this. She searches his face anxiously, and he shakes his head. He doesn't even know how to put into words what he wants to say – just that it's futile and useless going back, that they've hurt each other, that it hurts. Going back will not fix it. “Come here,” he says instead, fully intent to go forward. Wherever that may be. 

The kiss starts out slow, but quickly grows anxious on her part. She's perfectly still on top of him, mindful of barely healed injuries he acquired recently, but the way she breathes and pulls his face to hers betrays desperation. 

“It's okay,” he says this time as he sits up against the headboard of his bed. Skye shakes her head, and the anguish on her face makes his chest hurt. 

He stops thinking. He lets her do whatever she wants, lead him wherever she wants and it ends with both of their clothes thrown away and scattered. She's planting her palms against his chest and he feels himself growing harder against her thigh, aching to join with her. Skye barely lets him breathe, her mouth insistent against his, her fingers wrapping around his dick and before he loses all thread of thought, he reaches behind to flick on the bedside light. 

He wants to see her. He wants to remember her face and the way desperation is ebbing and flooding her eyes, and her messy hair and pale scars across her skin. 

There's this way she's looking at him – his chest and arms and then scars on his side. There's gravity to the look she gives him and understanding in it that settles in his chest and stays. He looks at her abdomen, at the scars blooming in her middle and swallows, and it's almost like looking in the mirror. 

There's no need to explain. Nothing to say. No cover up that's necessary. 

He lets go. It feels like it's exactly what she wants, him to take the lead and push her down against his sheets, play with her body and spread her legs to kiss her there. She's moaning and arching and calling his name and he feels he is finally doing something right, finally making her feel good, because her eyes fill with something light and liquid instead of sadness. Her voice strains along with her hands desperately grabbing the sheet. She's repeating things like _please_ and _yes_ and _more_ , and he is happy to provide, finally able to give her something she's asking for. 

And then, when her hips arch off the bed and towards his mouth and her thighs start to shake, so does the rumble begin – deep and underneath them, sending vibrations through the floor and walls and the bed they're on. 

Skye bolts up with a gasp. 

“No,” she says weakly, drawing her knees up and together and crawling away from him.“no, no, no -”

“Skye -”

“Oh God, _no_ ,” she's saying as she starts to cry. 

All the warm rush leaves his body in an instant. She is curled into herself on the other end of his bed, naked and shivering along with the rumble. 

“Skye, please,” he says and when she doesn't answer, when she doesn't stop shaking (and along with her, the walls and the floor), he carefully, carefully touches her knee. 

She looks up. 

“Hey,” he says. “Skye, look at me.”

Somehow he manages to get close enough to run a soothing palm up and down her arm. He's acutely aware of the small space between them, constantly wondering if he should give her more, but she doesn't flinch or move away. Her muscles loosen, and when they do, the trembling starts to fade. 

He's learned his lesson about letting things go, and he's learned it with Skye in particular, but something it telling him _not_ to let her go right now. He tugs her closer to himself and she comes, willingly hiding inside his embrace. 

“I hate it,” she says. “I... can't -” she starts to cry, and even though her explanation is cut, he's pretty sure he understands. Everything feels tainted, everything she does is affected by this. It's the feeling you get when you look into the mirror and whatever you see there feels monstrous and you don't know how to cut it out of yourself. 

(And God knows that cutting your hair doesn't help). 

“I hate it,” she says. “I don't want it, I can't even _fuck_.”

*

Skye is staring blankly at her bowl of cereal when he places a laptop in front of her. Her eyes rise to meet his, obviously surprised. 

“What?” she asks. 

“I know this is more like your thing,” Grant says. “I mean, you're the one who's good at finding things out like this. But Skye. Look.”

She blinks. 

“It's a seismic map,” she says. 

“Of past forty eight hours,” Grant says. Skye closes her eyes. “It's a seismic map of this area, Skye. And in the past forty eight hours... there was no unusual seismic activity. Meaning -” her head snaps up and she's giving him an entirely different kind of look. “You and I felt the vibrations, sure. But they weren't even close to anything... Skye, I'm trying to tell you... it was unpleasant, but it wasn't dangerous.” 

She looks at him and then at the screen again, biting her lip. In the first time of what feels like forever, there's something like hope in her eyes. She reminds him of that girl from the van.


End file.
